Characterizing, monitoring, and simulating land cover dynamics using GlobeLand30: A case study from 2000 to 2030

Land cover maps provide us with a unique opportunity to monitor our environmental and anthropogenic resources over space and time. Temporal land cover maps increase the efficiency of land monitoring process by providing a set of observations so that any changes in the landscape can be tracked. So far, many land change monitoring efforts have been limited to small regions and analysing local processes, because there has been a lack of fine resolution global land cover maps for regional and global studies. Recently, the availability of bi-temporal GlobeLand30 product for years 2000 and 2010 has strengthened our land monitoring observations through a 10-year window at 30-meter resolution. The main objective of this study is to explore the land cover changes within 2000–2010 in one of the most dynamic regions in the Middle East. To do so, GlobeLand30 datasets were used for characterizing the regional landscapes and the distribution of the existing land cover types. Moreover, the study aims at predicting the future land cover patterns by 2030 based on the historical changes. The quantitative analysis reveals a high degree of changes from the majority of land types to barelands with the highest contribution from grasslands and shrublands. The vibrant spots of change are located on central Iran towards its eastern border while the persistent spots are located on its north and northwestern parts. The predictive measures using Markov chain analysis message forthcoming changes in favor of increasing barelands being taken from grasslands, cultivated lands, and shrublands. The findings are beneficial to a wide range of end users including academics, land managers, and environmentalists on a) which resources were available in the first decade of 21st century, and b) how they were treated within a decade, and c) how the resources will evolve within the following two decades. Further discussions on the achieved results and future directions of research are presented in the conclusions.